The Next Steps for the Net Neutrality Plan

The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 this morning to advance a plan that would allow broadband companies to offer content producers premium “fast lane” service in exchange for payment, so long as those deals are “commercially reasonable.” The process isn’t over, though.

The vote opens the plan to a four-month comment period, “after which the commissioners will vote again on redrafted rules that are meant to take into account public opinion. But the enactment of final rules faces significant challenges,” notes the Washington Post. In writing the final rules, Chairman Tom Wheeler will try “to balance the interests pushed by Washington’s armies of telecom-industry lobbyists, increasingly powerful lobbyists from Silicon Valley and the fast and furious campaigns organized by consumer advocates online.”

The next few months will offer stakeholders more chances to make the same arguments they’ve been pushing over the past few weeks. The New York Times notes that even if Wheeler meets his goal of finishing the rule this year, “the issue will probably be challenged in court. Any new rules that impose restrictions on Internet service providers are all but certain to attract legal challenges from broadband companies or public advocacy groups — or both.”

The concept of “commercially reasonable” fast-lane deals is a “second shot at making regulation work” after a federal court decision earlier this year that struck down the FCC’s previous “Open Internet” order, writes CQ Roll Call’s Rob Margetta. “The problem, experts say, is that almost no one has a solid idea of how broadly that standard could be interpreted, or how exactly the FCC intends to enforce it.”

The most ardent advocates of democratic majorities’ unlimited power also tend to be the very administrators who know that once authority is assumed in the name of the majority, it will be they who command it.

butch

Can anyone remember the last time the Government did something fpr we the people. I can’t, It’s take away food from poor, destroy the middle class,take this and take that. They live in a bubble that will pop if they take away our last freedom the internet.No one stay’s king of the hill forever.

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Technocrat covers the tech and telecom community in Washington.

Anne L. Kim (@annekimdc) writes for Technocrat. She previously covered the details of legislative action for CQ Roll Call, where she focused on technology, science, transportation and health bills.